Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs V. Kim
Hoggard

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs Richard
Mueller

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs George
Kennedy

The Historian of the Department, William Z. Slany

Also Present:

John P. Glennon, Office of the Historian

Elaine McDevitt, Office of the Historian

Ms. Hoggard began by expressing her pleasure at being able to discuss with the
four members of the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation
the Department’s ongoing efforts to assure the comprehensiveness, accuracy, and
overall credibility of the Foreign Relations series. The
Department takes very seriously the recent expressions of concern about the
completeness and usefulness of some recent volumes. These are also issues of
concern to the Department and the Bureau of Public Affairs. The Department and
its historians have themselves been wrestling with these issues for some years
and have been searching for solutions. Ms. Hoggard assured the four members of
the Advisory committee of her confidence in the professionalism of the Historian
and his staff and their commitment to the publication project. the Department’s
continued need for the recommendations of the Committee in the series.

Ms. Hoggard summarized the process being followed by the Department for
modernizing and perfecting procedures for the preparation, declassification,
verification, and publication of the Foreign Relations
volumes. The process involves discussion among all the Department officials and
divisions who share the responsibility for the preparation and publication of
the volumes. These internal discussions were deliberate and sometimes more
time-consuming than the Bureau of Public Affairs would wish. Under Secretary for
Management Ivan Selin was taking a very strong personal role in giving overall
guidance to the process. The Department was centering its internal deliberations
on the basis of a plan developed by the Historian. Once this plan was fully
agreed upon within the Department, it would be fully coordinated with other
agencies in the foreign affairs community.

The Historian offered a short outline of the four major elements of the plan for
the modernized Foreign Relations series that the
Department now had under review. First and foremost was the urgent need for
Department historians to expand their documentary research to the records of the
other principal foreign affairs agencies of government. The agencies would be
expected to cooperate with the Department historians by providing access to the
historical records. In the case of intelligence agencies such cooperation might
consist of agency historians collecting documents for publication in the Foreign Relations series.

The second aspect of the plan was the refinement of the declassification
procedures to provide a greater lean toward disclosure of complete historical
context. The key to such forward leaning declassification was the development of
an appeals procedure that involved policymakers at whatever leadership level was
necessary. These officials would apply a balancing test to difficult
declassification cases and reach final declassification decisions that assured
the most accurate and comprehensive historical record consistent with current
American policies and negotiations.

The third part of the plan under study in the Department, and already partly
implemented, was the development of features in published volumes that would
maximize the readers’ understanding of research methodologies used in preparing
volumes, explain the relationship between what was published and what was
available in the historical archives, and indicate as precisely as possible what
subjects or particular information could not be included in a published
volume.

Finally, the plan calls for expanded activity by the Advisory Committee in
assessing the scholarship and completeness of the published record and making
recommendations to the Department regarding the volumes. Access to the
classified documentation withheld from volumes was essential for the Committee
to make fully informed recommendations. It was also necessary for the committee
to expand its advice and insight into the planning of the volumes so that the
research efforts of Department historians in the archives of the various
agencies can be better focused.

Prof. Perkins initiated a brief discussion of the use of disclaimers in Foreign Relations volumes in those instances when the
declassification procedure resulted in the withholding of documentation integral
to a coherent and comprehensive record. Perkins himself feared that use of
disclaimers might encourage a more inflexible declassification process. He posed
several examples of sensitive topics for which it would be difficult to write a
disclaimer on which historians and declassifiers could agree. Ms. Hoggard
indicated that the prefaces to the most recently published volumes showed the
Department’s intention to try to explain to readers as much as possible about
materials not included or withheld because of declassification decisions.

Ms. Hoggard was glad of the opportunity to consult with the four Advisory
Committee members, and eager to convene a formal meeting of the full Committee
soon. She proposed that the next meeting be moved up from the original November
date to sometime in October. There was agreement that an earlier meeting would
be extremely useful. The Historian would arrange a date. There would not be
sufficient time to provide the Committee members with Top Secret security
clearances by the October meeting. The Committee might meet again in early
spring of 1991 when the members’ clearances were completed, and begin the
process of seeing the complete record of denied documents of Foreign Relations volumes.

The Committee members present for the consultation requested information about
forthcoming meetings. They wished to know whether the proposed October meeting
would include at least a continuation of the oral briefings regarding the impact
of the declassification process upon particular Foreign
Relations volumes. Ms. Hoggard indicated that the PA Bureau would try
to arrange such oral briefings for the next Committee meeting. She indicated
further that the Department had no wish to become involved in an overhaul of the
government’s entire declassification process. The Department’s immediate goals
were to improve the quality of the series, and to ensure that the Advisory
Committee was able, on the basis of access to withheld classified documents, to
verify the volumes or make recommendations regarding their editing and
publication.

There was discussion about Top Secret security clearances. These clearances
involved certain responsibilities, and Committee members would have to decide
whether they wished to assume such responsibilities and potential constraints.
Those Committee members present requested information about the impact upon them
and their scholarly research and writing of Top Secret security clearances. The
Department will look into the issue and provide the Committee members with such
information.

Deputy Assistant Secretary Mueller provided an overview of the status of
legislation regarding the Foreign Relations series
pending in the Congress. Such legislation had been included in S.2749 which was
a bill to provide supplemental authorization of appropriations for FY 1991 for
the Department of State and the USIA. The bill was approved by the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee without any discussion of the sections regarding the
Foreign Relations series. There appeared to be little
likelihood that the legislation would be acted upon by the time of the
Congressional summer recess in early August.

The Department of state and other foreign affairs agencies have closely studied
the proposed legislation and found it seriously flawed. The Bureau of Public
Affairs understands that the legislation was well intended and had a worthy
goal--to strengthen the Foreign Relations series. The PA
Bureau feels that the goal could be better met by the Executive branch’s
adopting a plan for the Foreign Relations series of the
sort being considered now within the Department, and subsequently to be
coordinated with other agencies.

Deputy Assistant Secretary Mueller and Dr. Slany explained some of principal
concerns with the legislation. The section of the proposed legislation creating
an Historical Advisory Committee is particularly flawed. It would require that
the chairman of a new Historical Advisory Committee be appointed by the
President and receive the consent of the Senate. Some members of the Advisory
Committee found this provision particularly objectionable. The new Committee
would not be a committee advising the Department and its historians on the
scholarship of the series but would instead become an operational body of the
government meeting frequently and for extended periods of time in order to
review and evaluate declassification decisions of the Department and other
agencies. The proposed legislation also fails to provide for the position of
Executive Secretary. Regulations assign the position of Executive Secretary of
the current Advisory Committee to the Historian who is particularly able to
connect the needs and experiences of the Department historians with the
recommendations and assistance of the Advisory Committee.

Above all, the proposed legislation would establish standards of withholding that
were totally in conflict with the existing structure of laws, regulations, and
directives on classification, declassification, and access and use of special
types of security information. Several agencies have already begun their own
efforts to modify the draft legislation. Steps are also under way to remedy a
clause in the legislation that would require agencies to make available to the
Department, at considerable cost to themselves, vast numbers of copies of
documents for use in preparing the historical record.

Anne Van Camp shared with others at the meeting information about the continuing
efforts within Congressional committees to revise and further develop the
language of the proposed Foreign Relations legislation.
Some of the revisions under consideration, such as the explicit designation of
particular major professional societies to offer nominees to the new Committee,
might be improvements over the existing language. The scope and nature of the
responsibility of the proposed Advisory Committee to review all withheld
historical documents appeared to be totally unworkable.

The PA Bureau regarded its draft plan for a modernized Foreign
Relations series as far preferable to any Congressional legislation. Of
the current proposed legislation, the provisions regarding a new and different
Advisory Committee were far more unworkable than the more general provisions
establishing the publication of the Foreign Relations
series as a statutory responsibility of the Department and the Executive
branch.

There was some discussion by the Advisory Committee members present as to how
they might make known their own views regarding the proposed legislation. Ms.
Hoggard urged against any collective Advisory Committee action on legislation at
this time, observing that individual Committee members like any other citizen
must decide for themselves. She did request that the Committee members wait
until the Department had prepared and sent to the Congress, a letter setting
forth in some detail, the Department and Executive branch position and policy on
the question of reforming the preparation of the Foreign
Relations series, and on the particular legislation pending in
Congress. Advisory Committee members might agree or disagree with aspects of
Department policy, but it ought to be more clearly understood before strong
judgments were made about the pending legislation.